is 2016 the worst year in human history?

Back, Sack, and Crack of Rome.

thinking of Khia now for some reason

stunning lack of non-western history here - write in vote for 210 BC, the burying of the scholars

upon further reflection i am changing my vote to 200,000 B.C., when homo sapiens sapiens evolved from archaic humans

it's sad, ppl in 1346 never even got to hear Bowie and Prince

ppl rly bad at reading thread title questions

um I factored in human history

it's sad, ppl in 1346 never even got to hear Bowie and Prince

― lettered and hapful (symsymsym), Saturday, December 3, 2016 10:06 AM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is so great. we are blessed to have been alive during the reign of Bowie and Prince.

and also, not the plague.

the death count for plagues since 1346 has to be somewhere in the hundreds of millions

http://dailypicksandflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/how-very-interesting-come-closer-and-tell-me-more-tiger.jpg

1945: hiroshima, nagasaki

this was on the original list but it got deleted and when i reconstituted it i forgot to add it

stunning lack of non-western history here - write in vote for 210 BC, the burying of the scholars

stunning lack? i made sure to include a lot of non-western history.

xxp Up to 500 million from small pox in the 20th century alone.

i did not like this year very much! but i'm lucky i had a great thanksgiving

voted the midnight of the century

2009 - GAPDY

a scholarly friend told me at the British Museum last week that the Alexandria Library thing is mythical/exaggerated

i'm sure it's exaggerated, it's just the perfect fairy tale of regret for bibliophiles and people who hate Christianity

it wouldn't be right if this poll threw up a winner that wasn't caused by humans themselves tbf.

― Le Bateau Ivre

Yeah, I kind of feel like my opinion of "the worst year in human history" falls more toward the revelation of how awful humans are/can be, rather than natural disasters befalling them.

would consider adding 1941 as well for Operation Barbarossa. you could honestly make a case for every year of WW2.

just remembered that as well as some 80s pop stars dying 2016 was the year the Premier League was stolen by a gang of mercenary drug abusers who cheated their way past the noble corinthians who normally contest the title so maybe throw that in the scales

kin right mate

without being too callous about it's humungous death toll, the Taiping Rebellion sounds fucking epic and the Hong Xiuquan backstory is very compelling. Deffo need a good book on this one.

The Crusades were fucking stupid and vile and went on for yonks too and, er, remain current.

After considering the Black Death plumped for 1943.

ppl be fighting other ppl for money or cos different can we be getting over this pls

a scholarly friend told me at the British Museum last week that the Alexandria Library thing is mythical/exaggerated

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

a lot of stuff here is exaggerated. nobody even knows for sure _when_ the library was destroyed! (they could have looked it up in a library, but...)

the "burying of the scholars" is dubious in kind of the same way. that's the thing with ancient history- you have a serious lack of reliable sources.

The disasters in communist countries have a sickening irony about them -- alleged "worker's movements" rooted in a political tradition derived from hegel and the enlightenment leading to wholesale extermination of communities -- that make them harder to grasp than the holocaust, which emerged out of an ethno-nationalist movement that, from the start, would have seemed sinister from my own perspective. The disaster of global communism also seems to have crushed any energy human beings might have had for collective action, especially on a global scale, which is a shame as climate change is on the verge of swallowing our fragile civilization if nuclear war doesn't get to us first.

Still voted for the Holocaust.

i don't see why the failure of communism would be any more permanent than the failure of fascism was.

Idk if we need communism, just an understanding that the prerogatives of profit shouldnt outweigh that of survival. That and kill all rich people.

note to future communists: avoid mass collectivisation plans unless you have an amazing food distribution system and shitloads of grain in reserve

and an actual will not to let masses of your population starve to death.

That Platt book on the Taiping Rebellion looks a good un. Could anyone advance a better option?

it's funny to imagine someone in the siege of leningrad or whatever being like "1941 is just the worst!"

"oh god not Paderewski too fuck 1941 man will this year never end"

http://www.biography.com/people/groups/died-1941

this shits on your 2016 celeb death list btw fucking babies

that was angrier than it need be sorry, just found out James Joyce and Jelly Roll Morton have died, had a bit of an Amanda Palmer moment

"Another bombardment? This is definitely the darkest timeline."

The General Government actually issued a tourist guidebook to occupied Poland in '43. And it wasn't unheard of that middle class German families would travel to sites of genocide and point and stare. I'd guess this type of behaviour isn't unprecedented throughout history.

Great Bengal Famine. Good old British Empire, gawd bless you, Ma'am.

"The disaster of global communism also seems to have crushed any energy human beings might have had for collective action, especially on a global scale, "

tris do u really believe that humans have never acted in a collective manner outside of the historically applied frameworks grouped under communism

do u also separately think that humans have been subject to a 'global scale' - if that is any different than any notional scale of magnitude encompassing the attention bounds of yr homo sapiens ito where dinner is coming from on any timeline u wish- for long enough to be making generalities about it as a concept also lads trump is kinda a dead horse will ye fucking stop

Pages in category "1941 deaths"
The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 3,099 total. This list may not reflect recent changes

oh ferfuxsake

on the other hand:

Pages in category "2016 deaths"
The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 6,206 total. This list may not reflect recent changes

so there you have it, 2016 is clearly more than twice as bad as 1941.

i think it's more like, throughout the cold war capitalism was seen as the economic system that went along with democracy. fighting despotism meant fighting communism. being part of the global community meant embracing certain kinds of free trade ideals, or securing the rights of corporations to do business with each other across state lines. this paradigm has more to offer it than communists would admit -- trade helps secure peace; growth, even when achieved under exploitative conditions, pulls people out of poverty -- but it's not enough to really secure global peace and prosperity in a meaningful way. most people get left out of the decision process, and some things -- like environmental destruction -- just cannot be addressed without hurting profits and growth

most Marxists wouldn't argue that capitalism hasn't enriched people more than earlier forms of economic organization, just so we're clear

no, not marxists, but a lot of anti-globalization adbusters types do

consider that Trump won't be president till 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OO9LloDSJo

when did people start to get interested in assessing individual years in this way?

december 2, 2016

I'm on team An Lushan

Smallpox very likely killed more than 50% of the population of the western hemisphere within a few decades of its arrival. The black death killed nearly half of Europe's population. As bad as this year is shaping up for those of us living through it, covid-19 isn't even close to the head of that class.

Governments around the world in those named single years didn’t respond to massive climate crisis events by relaxing or waiving checks on fossil fuel extraction.